Book Reviews

The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea (Mishima, Yukio)

2006-01-08T20:33:00.000Z

Yukio Mishima’s The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea is a short novel but, due to its tight plot, brevity is not an issue. Published in 1963, seven years before he committed ritual suicide, the novel explores motivation and the factors that can cause someone to abandon their passions and resume their life embracing the dreams of another.

Noboru Kuroda, a thirteen year old on the cusp of an adult world, is part of a savage gang whose members, despite their exemplary grades at school, have rebelled against the adult world they deem hypocritical. Under the tutelage of Noboru’s friend, also thirteen, they condition themselves against sentimental feelings – a goal they call ‘objectivity’ - by killing stray cats.

Ryuji Tsukazaki, a merchant seaman, has been granted two days’ shore leave and has spent the time romancing Noboru’s widowed mother, Fusako. Noboru likes the sailor at first, his commitment to the sea and all the manly stories he has to tell. But, as Ryuji falls for Fusako, Noboru feels betrayed by the man’s burgeoning romanticism and, with the help of his gang, feels that action should be taken against the man who has replaced his father.

The first thing I noticed while reading this novel was that the characters are rich with life and history. Noboru, at thirteen, has strong feelings for his mother that manifest through voyeuristic sessions at night when, peeking into her room through a spy-hole, he watches her undress, entertain, and sleep. Ryuji, the sailor, knows he has some purpose at sea and continues his life off the land in the hope that one day he will learn his place in life. And Fusako, five years widowed, displays certain strength as she runs her own business, mixes with a richer class of citizen, while trying to raise he son as best she can.

The way the characters develop from this introduction is fast yet believable – the book, in fact, is split into two sections, Summer and Winter, to show that enough time has passed to be plausible. Noboru’s respect for Ryuji wanes as he becomes the worst thing, based on his gang’s beliefs, a man can be in this world: a father. Ryuji’s abandonment of his life’s passion is, of course, the main thread of the novel and it is a tragic decision he makes to give up the destiny waiting for him at sea in order to embrace the world of Fusako and the new direction she has planned for him.

The best thing about this novel is the language. The translator, John Nathan, has done a wonderful job and not a page passes without hitting you with a warm wash of sea-spray. Metaphors and similes are drenched with watery goodness as they add to the novel’s appeal. The prose is warm during the Summer section but as the book turns to Winter the turns of phrase become icier and tend to sting more. The dialogue is nice and realistic and doesn’t smart of stereotypical Japanese honour; the way the characters interact completely plausible.

I hadn’t heard of Mishima until I picked up this novel and, given that he had three Nobel nominations in his lifetime, I will certainly look out for more of his work. His concise prose, realistic characters, and the way his voice carries the sea makes him a rare find. If books were shells, I would hope to hear Mishima in every one.

Palindrome Hannah (Bailey, Michael)

2006-01-03T11:39:00.000Z

Having been a fan of horror for many years I have moved away from the genre (although I still enjoy the occasional horror movie) due to its decline. There is little originality left in the field given that it’s becoming just the same old authors churning out the same old stories over and over. Indeed, with more voices leaving the field (Anne Rice, Poppy Z. Brite, Clive Barker) there are fewer - easily available anyway - to listen to. Sometimes a novel comes along that offers an original spin on the genre but fails in its execution - Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves being a case in point.

So, when told about Palindrome Hannah, a horror novel by self-published author, Michael Bailey, I was interested to see if he had anything new to offer the genre. His claim that the book is part homage to David Mitchell’s work was intriguing although the homage to Stephen King was disconcerting given that I view King as a tired voice in a genre crying out for new blood and fresh invention. The book itself, a collection of five novellas with interweaving elements, claimed to have a sixth tale, told in reverse, which detailed the sad life of the title character.

The first story, Reflections, sees the suicidal Aeron Stevenson struggle with some inner demons and the more he agonises over them the more distant he becomes from wife, Karen, and child, Matty. He takes time off work as he suffers delusions – of being one of his son’s army men, for example – and resolves that the only way to escape the delusions, when looking at the man in the mirror, is to take his own life. He decides on his plan of action and, after writing a verbose suicide note that felt out of character, he attempts to shoot himself although Death, it seems, is partial to the occasional practical joke.

Pumpkin Carving, the second tale, is one of the weaker in the book. It follows the declining marriage of Tayson and Jackie Pierce as he, editor of Seattle magazine, Brenden Talented, goes from bar to bar being nasty to everyone he meets while stalking his wife who we discover has a healthier appetite for men than is immediately obvious. The characters are deliberately unlikeable and Tayson’s repertoire of jokes is tired but at least they are spoken by the character and not the narrator – that would be criminal. The narration in this tale jumps between third person (Tayson) and first person (Jackie) and recounts each other’s version of events as they spiral toward the gory denouement.

Third story, The Whiteness, is the worst of the five on offer. It’s written as a memoir of a stay in an orphanage during the 1920s which, given everything that happens there, is so completely unbelievable: the caretakers were bullies; boys and girls were separated; nobody was permitted to talk; food was unrecognisable as food; and so on as we experience the ‘so bad it’s cliché’ world of the young Earl Heimlich. Given that the memoir is full of mistakes, which Heimlich acknowledges, it does make a mockery of the aforementioned Brenden Talented which published it. In his memoir Heimlich thinks back to mental blackouts he had – or should that be whiteouts since he nicknamed them ‘the whiteness’? - and the events that led to the salvation of he and the others in the orphanage. I am, however, left perplexed at how someone in the 1920s can be described as having a Beatle-style haircut and looking like John Lennon. Even though I’m aware the memoir was written after Beatlemania it still felt clumsy.

Penultimate tale, Finding God, is the best on offer in Palindrome Hannah. It begins with a man, recognisable from Reflections, with no known identification (so he’s called John Doe) in a mental institution claiming that he is God. Over a course of consultations, two-dimensional lead character Dr. Milton – his ongoing pen clicking doesn’t make him a rounded or believable person – asks John all manner of questions. John, who has a touch of the Kevin Spaceys about him, answers every question almost as if he is Spacey’s character from K-Pax or, er, John Doe from Se7en. This tale, of the five, is fast paced as the man who believes himself God apparently makes a country disappear and disappears from the institution as and when he pleases.

The final yarn, Inside/Outside, tells of bully Ray Duschenne and the kids who make a pact to get their revenge on him. He wakes in a coffin wondering if he is dead or if he has been buried alive by accident. The story then backtracks through each member of the gang he bullied as they play their part in the plan to serve Ray’s comeuppance. Ray, as a bully, felt stereotyped – father beats him up, you see – but, for a young tyrant, he seemed to be a bit of a loner which, given that bullies usually have henchmen, was a nice touch although an exploration into why he was who he was could have made the story more tragic. The ending of this story - and the whole novel, of course - was the best as it answered a question left by the woeful Pumpkin Carving tale and brought the book to a close, clicking the penultimate piece of the jigsaw into place. The story of Hannah, it seems, is meant to be a missing piece for discussion rather than conclusion.

There’s nothing wrong with five interlinked stories and, to give the author credit, they do link fairly well and at unexpected tangents. The big problem is the claim that there is a hidden sixth story woven into the others, the story of the book’s title character. I would think that ‘woven’ is the wrong word and would suggest ‘shoe-horned’ as an alternative as the appearances of Hannah and her mother, Julie, feel tagged on, their presence never feeling natural. Hannah, in fact, makes only one venture into the prose, in Finding God, but I never did feel that her young mother doing a few jobs (supermarket, stripping, babysitting) was enough to show that her life, as the blurb claims, was a sad one. If the author knew in his mind that Hannah’s was a sad life then it didn’t transpire on the page. Of course, in fiction it’s okay to leave questions unanswered, like Michel Faber regularly does, but with Palindrome Hannah I didn’t feel that the author could bring it all together so that I could put down the book pleased to have something to think about. It would, I believe, have been better to have five interwoven stories without the nuisance that is Hannah and her mother.

While the stories told in Palindrome Hannah may not be new it is not so much what is told that let’s the book down but how they are told. I don’t mean the interlinking tales – which is a nice treatment – but I refer to the overall quality of the prose. I never found any of the character’s to be believable and this was, in part, due to their dialogue which seemed strained and failed to excite coupled with the author telling the reader more about them than he should have. And, to top it all off, the book is rife with spelling mistakes and punctuated by the repetition of statements which makes comments in the ‘from the author’ section at the end of the novel where he thanks people for “exhausting editing” and “meticulous proofreading” worth a chuckle.

Bailey seems to be a fan of word games and Palindrome Hannah is privy to a few: doctors, in Reflections, can have their names reversed to hint at their particular discipline; each story is prefixed by a palindrome; the characters are fond of puns. The latter would have been acceptable if left alone but the author takes time out from the narrative to highlight each one.

It is easy to see why Bailey received the rejection slips he refers to in the ‘from the author’ section as Palindrome Hannah suffers from a number of things which Bailey would be best to iron out of his work if he is to become a new voice in horror. He lingers over irrelevant details too much, perhaps for authenticity, but when it doesn’t affect the story how someone drives then it’s not necessary to catalogue every action taken to drive the car. A professional proof-reader wouldn’t go amiss so as to capture spelling and factual errors rather than trusting the task to – what I can only presume – are friends and relatives. The final thing would be to quit the cheesy posturing – reminiscent of Garth Marenghi – such as “to all of you on the other side of this written mirror – my reflective readers – for surviving my horrific tales”. Yes, Stephen King does it but he’s a tired old voice. Remember?

Overall, I wasn’t enamoured by Palindrome Hannah. It’s a novel with a nice idea and satisfactory construction but it’s ultimately let down by inexperienced storytelling. I should hope the author improves with his next novel and collection of short stories alluded to on the back cover, even though I doubt I shall be reading them, but I wonder if Palindrome Hannah - without the title character and with neater prose – could have made more of a splash with agents and publishers rather than a bump in the night.

Brave New World (Huxley, Aldous)

2005-12-17T18:59:00.000Z

Reading Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World was inspired by realising that I hadn’t read any of a recent list stating the top twenty geek novels. Given that my impressions of geek literature being hardcore science fiction and adventures in elfworld it was pleasant to discover that this novel, over seventy years after its publication, is still fresh. I would tend to think, however, that its endurance is due to its satirical tone rather than any sort of geeky idolisation as, despite its futuristic setting, it deals more with its characters rather than the world around them.

Set in a dystopian society in 2540AD or, as the book calls it, AF632 (AF meaning After Ford) the novel presents an almost perfect society where war and poverty has been eliminated at the cost of family, culture, and religion. The whole world is considered to be a single state and the central tenets are those, as you would expect, of the industrialist Henry Ford. Fordism is the semi-religious doctrine that permeates this society: his sayings are gospel, his name is said in vain, the cross has been replaced by the ‘T’; indeed, in a motion similar to crossing oneself, the citizens make the sign of the ‘T’. An interesting idea, perhaps, but the incessant expletives (“for Ford’s sake!”, “oh my Ford!”, etc.) do lose some of their humour and power.

It begins, with little narrative, in the Central London Hatching and Conditioning Centre, a place where human beings are raised are ‘bottled’ (raised in test tubes) and then conditioned via radiation and Pavlovian techniques to become one of the five social castes of society (the independent Alphas through to the half-retarded Epsilons). Once fit for society the citizens are then ‘decanted’. The Director of this centre is giving a tour to a group and shows them the bottled embryos passing along a conveyor belt as they are treated with chemicals to determine the future intelligence and physical attributes of the embryo. He then shows them the nursery where some children are being conditioned to loathe, of all things, books and flowers.

Then, moving on, we meet one of the world’s controllers, a man named Mustapha Mond. He tells the touring children about the World State and the benefits that attempts to quash peoples’ emotions and relationships has made on society. Indeed, in this world, there is no marriage, grief, or joy – promiscuous sex is actively encouraged, death is no big deal, and games only serve to further the economy.

More characters, from here, are introduced into the narrative as Huxley’s world escapes the Hatchery and Conditioning Centre and goes further afield. The self-conscious Bernard Marx gets permission from the Director to visit a savage reservation in New Mexico; Lenina Crowne, attracted to him, accepts his offer to join him. Helmholm Watson, a hypnopaedia writer (slogans that are repeated and learnt whilst citizens sleep) shows discontent at his job feeling, as an Alpha, that he is capable of much more. And, in New Mexico, they meet John and his mother Linda, a pair of savages discontent with their world. Returning to London attempts are made to integrate John into society but, his world is shaped by Shakespeare (he found a copy of his complete works) and he disagrees with the dystopian World State, arguing with Mond until each character goes their own way (John to exile; Marx exiled.) and the final denouement.

Brave New World could have been better, there’s no doubt about that. The obvious hindrance was a narrative that never really centered on one character: one minute we were touring the hatchery, the next we’re following Bernard who, in turn, slinked into the shadows when John was introduced. Huxley has ideas, though, and amidst his obvious taste for neologisms (centrifugal Bumble-puppy!) gets his ideas across fairly well although this can be at the cost of the narrative as the climactic argument between John and Mond goes back and forward with neither being right. The World Controller argues that society is better off when nobody reflects on the past, when people aren’t given any time to themselves, and when there is nothing to be emotional about and that eliminated studies (history, religion, science) are wrongs that require control while John, in his misunderstanding of the World State, believes that people should have freedom of thought and be allowed to suffer emotions to make them human. Of course, in a world where people are made to order, made on Ford’s assembly line, he has little chance of ever making a point.

The writing in Brave New World is fine, if a tad verbose at times or scientific at others (dolichocephalic!) with, as previously mentioned, a world of neologistic commodities (pneumatic armchairs, for example). Dialogue is alright and serves to paint a more accurate picture of the characters but it is not entirely realistic and sometimes serves as device for infodumps. The characters, however, are hard to follow as they feature for little periods and, while you get an idea of what drives them, you don’t get a complete sense of their role within the story, especially as to their reactions by the novel’s close.

While I liked Brave New World one of the hardest things for me to do was imagine Huxley’s vision as it would be incarnate. When I think of future societies I am given to thoughts of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis but, when least expected, Huxley would throw in the countryside, savage reservations, and, unexpectedly, a lighthouse. I understand that these elements demonstrate a world that strives to be perfect but suffers from underlying problems (the people are kept happy by use of recreational drugs rather than any utopian positivity) that mean it is still a burgeoning dystopia rather than fully realised with its wheels completely greased. Overall, it’s an attractive novel, full of ideas, but one that suffers from a lack of organisation with them.

The People's Act of Love (Meek, James)

2005-11-05T12:12:00.000Z

It was the intention of James Meek that his third novel, The People’s Act of Love, should be written in the manner of the great Russian novels. While I have little to no experience in this branch of literature there were enough idiosyncrasies within the book to believe that he has, at least, achieved this. And, having spent eight years living in Russia whilst following his career in journalism, Meek may be better qualified than most to write a modern take on the Russian novel .

Set in Yazyk, a remote village in the Siberian wilderness, the novel investigates the actions of a small group of people. There is Balashov, the leader of a bizarre Christian sect; Mutz, a Jewish soldier from Prague, who is one of a number of Czech soldiers on the losing side of the Russian Revolution; Anna Petrovna, a young war widow, who lives in the town with her son, Alyosha; and Samarin, an enigmatic escapee from a Siberian prison camp, who is just passing through, being followed, so he says, by another prisoner named the Mohican.

The People’s Act of Love is high on drama, and, as the action unfolds the death of a local shaman brings suspicion to Yazyk. Samarin, being the stranger with an unverifiable story, becomes the prime suspect and is imprisoned. When he tells his story to a makeshift court, a long painful narrative about life in a hellhole called the White Garden, he garners sympathy and, at the request of the undersexed Anna Petrovna, goes to stay under her watchful eye.

As the events happen in Yazyk, further tension is added to the fears of the closeknit community by the knowledge that the Reds, winners of the Russian Revolution, are coming. A priority for them is to eliminate the Czech soldiers, men desperate to return home, and claim the town for the People. The leader of the Czech’s, a man named Matula, led his men in the massacre at Staraya Krepost for which the Reds want to exercise their own brand of justice.

Meek’s prose is wonderful, as fresh and crisp as the snow falling upon the land. In fact, the harsh temperatures of Siberia inform the prose: the description makes use of evocative words suggesting a locale lost in the emptiness of northern Asia. Characters trudge over ‘papery snow’, they wear two jackets, and even the trees are known to shudder.

Throughout the novel there are a number of scenes which are brutal but handled in such a way as to seem unimportant. A man is castrated; another is butchered and the separate parts of his body hung from a tree so that they may dry; while others are sentenced to death for no reason other than the Bolshevik ideal. Matula, also, shows his anti-Semite opinions in the way he talks to Mutz, always referring to him as ‘Yid’ and making light of his religion. It’s testament to Meek’s ability that he shows us such inhumanities without preaching and leaves it open to the reader to form their opinion on his characters.

Despite how bleak The People’s Act of Love gets, it is shot through with an underlying humour that serves some warmth to the frozen landscape. And while the jokes are old, or you know them in some incarnation, they are always spoken by the soldiers who, with their circumstances, can be forgiven as they try to maintain morale.

Another interesting slant, is the book’s passing regard to religious fundamentalism. The sect living in Yazyk are Christian but their methods and doctrines are far from standard Christianity. They are castrated to be more like angels and live without sin; a practice bewildering to some of the others living in the town. Not least of all, to Anna Petrovna, whose husband is Balashov, a soldier so devout that he gave up his wife, son, and member to be closer to God.

The main themes, however, are love and sacrifice. Anna Petrovna gives up her normal life to be with Balashov, a man she loves but can never love her again; Balashov’s love of God that he would forfeit his sexuality to be with Him; and Samarin, embodiment of the People, who would sacrifice parts of his nature so as to better prepare for the world ahead. In fact, the act of love referred to in the book’s title, comes from a conversation with him and Petrovna where he talks about eating a comrade for the greater good, beating off starvation to be able to change the world. Essentially, since the book is shot through with cannibalism references, Meek is asking if there is a right time to eat another human being.

The People’s Act of Love was longlisted for the Booker 2005 and, while I’ve not read all the books that made the eventual shortlist, I wonder if Meek may have missed out on a chance to become more of a public interest. His style is certainly enjoyable, his plotting tight, and his characters tinged with much humanity. I believe Meek’s earlier two novels were somewhat different to this book and, based on the change in direction he appears to have taken, we can look forward to an interesting voice for the future.

Slaughterhouse 5 (Vonnegut, Kurt)

2005-09-24T13:03:00.000Z

Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5 is seen as his best work and a modern classic although, having completed it, I’m left wondering why. Blending science fiction with his memoirs Vonnegut has created a meta-fictional novel where time travel is a primary plot device; one that allows him the freedom to dismiss chronology in the telling of his tale.

Billy Pilgrim is a war veteran, having been a prisoner of war in a converted abattoir in Dresden. Years after the war he is involved in a plane crash which causes him to become “unstuck in time”; a strange condition that allows him to travel to any point in his life, or even to the planet Tralfamadore where the aliens that live there view life as a single representation of every moment. Through his frequent travels in time, Billy Pilgrim gets to relive many points of his life such as Dresden, his marriage, and even his death; all of these combine to show Billy’s attempt at making sense of the world, his fatalist conclusions permeating the novel.

The story of Billy Pilgrim doesn’t start until the second chapter, the first, instead, being the author’s apology for the novel’s mess (although he states you can’t make sense of a massacre) and how, in his mind, the book came to be. The prose is minimalist and repetitive. Phrases appear regularly or statements reappear reworded. The use of “so it goes” whenever something dies, be it a person or bubbles in champagne, is understandable, however, in its need to demonstrate death as something routine and cheap, it does become grating.

There are many characters in Slaughterhouse 5 although I don’t feel that any of them were given much depth. People appear for a paragraph and then Billy Pilgrim is off on his travels before you have a chance to get to know them. Even Billy failed to hold my attention, possibly because we fail to really get to know him. The author spends time telling us about him rather than showing him doing anything which, I feel, cheapens the experience. His condition, that of being “unstuck in time”, leaves a nice ambiguity about the novel although it’s highly probable that his travelling is a delusional passage between memories brought on by the trauma of witnessing the bombing of Dresden.

Maybe the book is a product of its time or maybe there’s something I’m missing but Slaughterhouse 5 is not a novel I’d recommend. Having no experience of Vonnegut’s other work I can’t say whether this book, being part memoir, is a typical example of his canon. While the novel is understandably a mess, I can’t help but feel that the prose and characterisation are lacking and what, on paper, sounds like a great idea has been put through a literary slaughterhouse. So it goes.

The Courage Consort (Faber, Michel)

2005-09-19T22:46:00.000Z

Michel Faber’s The Courage Consort is one of those books where you wish it were longer or part of a collection. A novella of 150 pages it follows the story of a group of singers sent to Belgium for two weeks in order to rehearse a new avant-garde piece for an upcoming event. As they spend more time in each other’s company the group falls apart due to personality conflicts and personal problems.

Roger Courage is the founder of the singing group, named The Courage Consort, although the courage in their name comes from their willingness to tackle contemporary pieces in addition to the traditional standards. His wife, Catherine, is a manic depressive who, in preparation for the trip to Belgium, has forgotten her pills. Ben is an overweight bass singer who lives in his own personal world of silence. Julian is a seemingly bisexual vocalist with a love for Bohemian Rhapsody. And Dagmar, a young German, is the opposite of Catherine in her love for life; she has also, for the trip, brought along her newborn child, Axel.

The book begins with Catherine Courage sitting on the window ledge contemplating whether the four storey drop would be enough to kill her as her husband sit in the next room. As it continues the quintet spend the days practising Partitum Mutante, the avant-garde piece of Italian composer Pino Fugazzi, while the nights provide them with an over exposure to each other that leads to constant arguments about the direction the group should take. Their inability to work with each other leads to an incident that eventually breaks up the group, who are “possibly the seventh most renowned in the world”, although there is some hope for the group as evidenced by the optimistic ending.

The prose is light, the vocabulary restrained, and the plot simple. There is humour in this book but it’s not laugh out loud funny; the Brits’ interpretations of European accents, and the way characters communicate with each other. The characters are nicely done although the woman were better drawn than the males, a common occurrence in Faber’s work. Catherine, as the main character, is well conceived – her thoughts were realistic, her dialogue seemed right, and her mania added that extra bit of depth.

Faber’s novella is a good read, although, like in The Crimson Petal and the White, he leaves a few things unanswered – the source of a recurring noise from the nearby forest being a prime example – but this does provide scope for interpretation. Maybe we can presume that some parts of the story are delusions of Catherine’s. The Courage Consort almost succeeds as a standalone book, but I couldn’t help but feel that the characters needed a little more to fully appreciate them. That said, the story is still worth appreciating.

The Invisible Collection / Buchmendel (Zweig, Stefan)

2005-09-18T20:02:00.000Z

This nice little book from Pushkin Press, about A5 in size with quality paper, contains two shorts from Austrian author Stefan Zweig, whom I’d no knowledge of prior to spotting this on the shelf. Both stories, named The Invisible Collection and Buchmendel, are linked by the theme of obsession and describe the lives of two different men for whom life was solely about art and literature respectively.

The Invisible Collection begins on a train where the narrator meets an elderly art collector who proceeds to tell him about a recent experience that he believes is the strangest of his career. The story follows the man’s trip to a far outpost of Saxony where an old customer lived – this is in the time of the German depression following World War I – in the hope that he may sell up past purchases cheaply in the desperate financial climate. When he arrives, he meets with Franz Kronfeld, an octogenarian and veteran of the 1870s war. He notices that something is amiss with Kronfeld: he is blind. After lunch, Kronfeld’s daughter asks that their visitor understands the situation regarding Kronfeld’s collection, which he spends time with daily, and, in respect, deceives him so that he never knows the truth about its value, a worth he sees as the saviour of his family through these hard times.

Buchmendel is the longer of the two stories and a more popular tale from the Zweig canon. Another narrator recounts the story of a man called Jacob Mendel, a Russian Jew living in Vienna, with an encyclopaedic knowledge of books. For over thirty years he has sat from dawn to dusk in a coffee shop studying books and taking payment for advice on myriad esoteric subjects. His bibliomania is such that he notices little around him: the advent of electricity, the onset of war. Then, years later, the narrator remembering the character of Mendel returns to the café to find the old man no longer there and only one person, Frau Sporschil, who remembers him. With much sadness she recounts the story of his last few years, and how, emotionally wrecked from his mania and financially ruined from the depression, he was left with nothing and died on the steps of the café in which he had spent the greatest part of his life.

Zweig’s couplet of existential tales is emotionally wrought, and study a wider canvas than implied by their setting. Both display what I’ve found is a familiar trope of the author’s work; namely the decline of Europe and its increasing level of corruption – a belief that led to his suicide in 1942. There is a strange authorial decision in The Invisible Collection that, in my opinion, eliminates the need for the opening paragraph, as, to paraphrase, it states that the narrator met a man on the train and the following is what he said. Overall, though, the stories work well together, but a larger collection of Zweig’s work would have made a better introduction to his catalogue as it’s hard to understand the scope of his writing and ideas when both pieces are thematically linked.

Saturday (McEwan, Ian)

2005-09-16T11:18:00.000Z

Ian McEwan’s Saturday is the story of Henry Perowne, a London based neurosurgeon, as he reflects on his life via the events that happen during his day off. Mixing organised chores with random incidents, the novel provides a great character study, one of a man coming to terms with his advancing years, although the book is low on action.

One morning, Perowne wakes early to witness an aviation accident, which troubles him throughout the day. As the day progresses he makes love to his wife, gets involved in a traffic accident, gets beat at squash, buys fish, visits his sick mother, listens to his son’s band perform, argues politics with his poetess daughter, and settles down for a family meal in the evening. While all this happens, the London march against the impending war in Iraq gathers momentum.

The characters are extremely well done with the exception, perhaps, of Daisy, Perowne’s daughter, who simply argues her anti-war stance and hides her own little secret. Daisy and Theo, his son, are, unlike their father, creative souls, and at the age where they are ready to flee the nest. Baxter, the novel’s main antagonist, is a young man rendered emotionally unstable by a degenerative brain disease, embarrassed by his condition yet unable to prevent its detriment to his life. And Perowne, through all this, meditates on everything, no matter how seemingly insignificant, and the author presents him as emotionally ambivalent man; a man slow to take sides, but always willing to consider the wider picture.

The plot is small but the emotional and philosophical conclusions drawn from each observation or incident serves to complete the picture of Henry Perowne’s day. In the evening, Baxter returns to cause havoc with the surgeon’s family, a scaled down metaphor for the impending invasion of Iraq being an example of how one event, no matter how minimal, can lead to big changes in one’s life.

Overall, McEwan has crafted a novel worthy of praise, but its meditative assault can be overwhelming at times; the use of neurosurgical terms is difficult for the layman, but our protagonist is a neurosurgeon so it’s more than appropriate. It’s certainly relevant to the current political climate, and probably serves as a slightly autobiographical account of McEwan’s feelings as his own family grows up and becomes independent. Saturday is worth the read, for an interesting study of making sense of the world, and of growing old; or, as Perowne says, Saturday will become Sunday.

Ignorance (Kundera, Milan)

2005-09-12T22:16:00.000Z

Ignorance, by Milan Kundera, is a small novel but big on ideas. Playing like a watered down Odyssey, two Czech émigrés return to post-communist Prague after twenty years. A chance meeting in the airport stirs memories of long ago that leads to an interesting study of our memory, its limits and unreliability, and how, in our ignorance, we can take it for granted and trust it too much.

Irena fled to France during the Russian invasion; Josef to Denmark. Both have built new lives, made new friends, and forgotten who they were. After the fall of European communism in 1989, they return to their city only to find that it’s no longer theirs; it’s full of tourists, whores, and restaurants the Czechs can’t afford. A chance sighting in the airport causes Irena to engage Josef in conversation; she remembers him from a conversation twenty years ago. They agree to meet, and, as the novel builds up to their rendezvous, they go about their homecomings - meeting parents, friends, and, ultimately, themselves - to discover that Prague is no longer home.

Stylistically, the book is a dream. Although little happens in the novel - a conversation here, a wander there – it is the narrator’s asides that gels the experience, wandering off into philosophical mode, or giving atypical history lessons - all the time, maintaining a poetic tone. The prose is terse, but just right to create the surreal atmosphere it needs to succeed. It wanders effortlessly between the different characters and the lessons learned from their actions.

The characters are well drawn, although their focus is completely on their homecoming, their memory, and doubts about their patriotism. Their actions are believable; their conversations intelligent. Prague, as a character, is underdone – little of the city is given, and, after twenty years, it would have been nice to know the visible changes that time has wrought.

Overall, Kundera has provided an appealing novel, doubtless inspired by his own circumstances as a Czech émigré. While it may not be to the tastes of all (i.e. those seeking action) it does endow us with food for thought, something to consider about our memories. And, at least for me, the true thrill was watching how the philosophical and historical asides came together to complete the novel, and reinforce the characters’ feelings.

The Alchemist (Coelho, Paulo)

2005-09-11T14:00:00.000Z

The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho, is billed as a modern classic, yet I find it difficult to discern why. It has the feel of a fable; from a time as hazy as the desert in which it is set, and carries the lessons on life one would expect from such a parable. The feelings of distant memory that it creates, however, fashion a gap between the book and the reader.

It begins with Santiago, a shepherd boy, who gives up his customs to follow a dream he has, a vision of treasure found at the Egyptian pyramids. Along the way he meets a king, a crystal merchant, an Englishman, and an alchemist; all of whom, with their passing involvement, provide him with a piece of the spiritual jigsaw that is his life. Finally, when he arrives at the Egyptian pyramids, he learns a lesson in life that brings him happiness.

The novel is short, and, while it gets its message across, a number of other things suffer. The characterisation is lean; everyone is faceless, ageless, and speaks with the same voice, a voice of implied wisdom. Most characters are also nameless; even Santiago, the protagonist, is simply referred to as ‘the boy’ throughout. Setting, also, is a casualty of the book; while we follow Santiago through the desert, we never truly get the feeling of being there. We don’t feel the heat, thirst for water, or shiver when night falls.

The prose in the book is extremely simple, giving The Alchemist the feel of a children’s book. Adjectives, especially when necessary, are rare, so that most things are described as ‘the desert’, ‘a horse’, or ‘some wine’. The desert has no texture, the horse no character, and the wine no flavour. Repetition, also, lengthens the book so that, once wisdom has been spoken, it echoes through the narrative so that each action can be credited.

The Alchemist is a quick read, but it’s not a good read. It has the feeling of a bonding session in the workplace where you discuss the implications of pseudo-situations, only moved from the office to the desert. It’s a self-help book disguised as a novel, the “secrets” of life, though hardly life-changing, are listed as stages in one boy’s discovery. I hope you discover this review before the novel.

Lamb (Mac Laverty, Bernard)

2005-09-10T18:44:00.000Z

Lamb, by Bernard Mac Laverty, is, at 150 pages, a short read, but its brevity serves only to provide a perfectly told story without padding or exposition. It follows the story of a young priest, Michael Lamb (or Brother Sebastian), who runs away from the Irish Borstal that he works in, takes a deprived boy named Owen Kane with him. But, as his money dwindles, news of the kidnapping closes in on them, and Lamb finds himself running out of ideas on how to save the boy’s life, leading to a dark climax borne of both necessity and love.

Beginning in the Borstal, aptly referred as “a finishing school for the sons of the Idle Poor” by its head, Brother Benedict, Lamb observes this to be an accurate statement as he believes it finishes their lives, providing them with little hope for the future. Upon inheriting money from his father’s death Lamb resolves to rescue Owen, a misunderstood - and epileptic - boy, often made an example of due his stubborn nature, and give him the life he deserves. They break for London, and spend their time exploring the city and discovering each other, until the time comes when they have so few options that Lamb is required to make the decision that will affect their lives, but he believes to be right.

The characters, throughout, are developed sufficiently to create your own impression of them; although Owen’s character could have done with further expansion with regards to his life before Borstal. Lamb, especially, as you would expect a title character, is well conceived and his decisions, at all times, appear believable. Brother Benedict, a sadist at heart, claims that he “was belted black and blue myself what harm did it do me?” without realising that it turned him into the one now administering beatings. Even the fringe characters: conmen, housekeepers, and perverts have enough splashes of colour to make them plausible.

The writing, while not being flowery, is engaging enough to spin the narrative on, making it a book you are not likely to put down until completion. It’s a thrill to read as the escapes bond with each other, but watching as their world of opportunity caves in around them. The underlying meanings and symbols that make the book special, the many inferences of the book’s title, for example, raise the scope of the novel, adding further richness to it.

Lamb, for its length, covers a number of topics, but the theme that stands out, for me, is love; that, and the things you would do for it. Sometimes, you don’t even know you are doing it, Lamb discovers while trying to understand the fugues of Owen’s epilepsy. But it’s the grim denouement of the novel that questions how far one would really go, and it’s this that adds the pièce de résistance to a wonderful and haunting tale.

The Line of Beauty (Hollinghurst, Alan)

2005-09-09T23:31:00.000Z

Alan Hollinghurst’s fourth novel, The Line of Beauty, follows the story of Nick Guest, a lodger of the wealthy Fedden family, through the landslide years of the Conservative government in the 1980s. A bildungsroman, split into three sections, it observes Nick over four years as he climbs the social ladder, led by his dreams of wealth, status, and beauty, which ultimately lead to his downfall.

Nick has engineered his rise by befriending, at university, the son of minor MP Gerald Fedden, Toby, to whom he is attracted. Post-Oxford, he has moved into the home of the Feddens, an invite from Toby. The tale follows Nick’s first romance with Leo, a black social worker, and then moves on to his relationship with a beautiful millionaire, before dwelling on his eventual downfall. Throughout these events, which make up the aforementioned sections, the author examines the 1980s socially, politically, and beautifully.

First, the language; The Line of Beauty’s prose is a homage to Henry James, and Hollinghurst has it perfect, his contemporary take allowing less ambiguity with description. And it’s the description that exemplifies this novel; long, sweeping sentences, realistic action, and colourful observations, of the players’ thoughts and expressions, all punctuated with enough dialogue to complete, without being indulgent, every scene. With such detail on display, the novel takes its time, but the gradually developing arena Hollinghurst is showing us becomes a world in its own right.

Throughout the narrative, running at an unhurried pace, the characters are exemplary. The aesthete Nick Guest, so aptly named, searches for beauty in everything around him while being less than perfect himself. The Fedden patriarch, Gerald, an MP and philistine, chases his ambitions of having the Prime Minister, referred to as ‘the Lady’, to his house, and having his likeness realised by satirical puppet show, Spitting Image. Nick’s lovers (Leo, comic; the millionaire, hedonistic) draw empathy, while all the others in his life, having their positives and negatives traits, walk confidently off the page. Even Toby’s sister, Catriona, fittingly nicknamed ‘the Cat’, being the black sheep of the family, is perfectly realised, from her early neurosis, passing her chemically induced crests and troughs, to her rebellion from the family and unerring desire to tell the truth.

And the 1980s, as a setting, provides a reflection on a depressing period in British history: unemployment is on the rise, the rich are getting richer, and AIDS is a grim shadow waiting to kill those who aren’t careful. Moving in closer, to the London locations, the novel is rife with upper class dwellings, in which airy rooms are decorated with striking aesthetics despite the ignorance, Nick being the exception, of the occupants. The art, vases, paintings, and furniture, in the Feddens’ house serves only to demonstrate status, something Gerald is always striving to improve.

When Hollinghurst won the 2004 Booker Prize for The Line of Beauty, it became the first piece of gay fiction to take receipt of the award. There are, as you may expect in such a book, some scenes of homosexual sex, but the author, with great skill, doesn’t delve too deeply into being graphic, ensuring a comfortable read, and, in doing so, reveals facets of gay life that, to many readers, may have been unknown before.

The Line of Beauty is a triumph for literature; its characters are complex and engaging, its setting real without being nostalgic, and its themes thoroughly explored. It takes no moral stance, allowing the reader to decide as to the motivations of its characters and to their comeuppance. Its set pieces are incredibly wrought, the scene with Nick, high on cocaine, dancing with Margaret Thatcher, when Feddens achieves one of his dreams, being of particular merit. The humour also, for it is incredibly witty, shines out from the events and the dialogue, and it gives that little bit of light to what is, in essence, a tragic novel. At just over five hundred pages, it is a long book, but taking the time to read it proves that each page is worth it; in fact, it’s a book of beauty.

The Kite Runner (Hosseini, Khaled)

2005-08-25T22:31:00.000Z

"I became what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975. I remember the precise moment, crouching behind a crumbling mud wall, peeking into the alley near the frozen creek. That was a long time ago, but it’s wrong what they say about the past, I’ve learned, about how you can bury it. Because the past claws its way out. Looking back now, I realize I have been peeking into that deserted alley for the last twenty-six years."

Thus begins The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini’s debut novel; a tale spanning Afghanistan in the seventies to its part in the Twin Towers passing the Soviet invasion and Taliban rule along the way. The story involves the narrator, Amir, trying to gain his father’s respect by attempting a triumph in the local kite fighting competition. Hassan, his friend and servant, helps him but a life-changing event, for which Amir blames himself, occurs which sees their lives take different paths. When the Soviets attack Amir and his father flee to America via Pakistan where they begin a new life. Amir grows up, graduates, marries, but the thought of his guilt sees him return to Afghanistan, now under Taliban rule, in order to trace Hassan and to right the wrongs of that day in 1975.

Despite the first chapter, a page at most that could be cut, the book begins nicely and sets the stage. Kids play, Islam encourages regular prayer, and the village teems with life. The story continues and we learn about the Hazara, the lowly Afghans used as servants, and how Amir’s playmate, the hare-lipped Hassan, is of this caste. Hassan represents everything the narrator wishes he could be: brave, honourable, and willing to stand up for himself. When Amir needs something, Hassan provides, when Amir is in trouble, Hassan takes the blame, and when Amir is bullied Hassan takes the beating.

It is during this time that Hosseini is at his strongest which, in my opinion, is still rather weak. His characters are alive in their own environment, the play between them is realistic, and the dialogue is nicely garnished with a sprinkle of Farsi. We are also invited to sample Afghani culture as we tour houses and schools, sample the food, visit the cinema, and smile during the kite fighting competition. The only problem here is that the description is so matter of fact that it seems the narrator is listing what he remembers without commenting on any emotional impact it may have caused.

In much the same way that the Soviet attacks caused a downhill surge in the quality of life, the book takes a tumble. Amir’s life in America is a section of approximately seventy pages which, thinking back, seems tagged on. It was as if it were written once the novel was complete and tucked in the centre simply to lengthen the text. Nothing that happens here bears any relation to the rest of the story with the exception of the characters and where the ending is located. I wonder, perhaps, if this part were added to make it not so completely foreign to the mainstream American market.

After the American section the novel doesn’t improve. Amir returns to Afghanistan to right his wrongs and the story becomes more of a catalogue of Taliban atrocities than the emotional narrative it could have been. Eventually, after a series of ridiculous coincidences, the story returns to America where it, thankfully, concludes.

I found the narrator to be too perfect in his recollection of times gone by. Every detail is rendered with incredible certainty, including dreams where he’s not quite coherent, and the descriptions are without sentiment. Nostalgia has never been so dry. Cliché is used prolifically within the narrative although the middle aged Amir does make light of this. He doesn’t, however, seem to realise that his own life story has graced so many movies and books already that, despite being the only Afghan protagonist I know, he is already hackneyed.

The Kite Runner is not a book that I can recommend and I disagree with the critics that are quoted as saying the book was “emotional” when it was so cold that it would take more than a poppy field ablaze to melt its boring heart.

The Remains of the Day (Ishiguro, Kazuo)

2005-08-18T22:31:00.000Z

A short monologue (about 250 pages) dictated by Stevens, the Butler of Darlington Hall in the 1950s who, on the recommendation of his new American employer, takes a trip out to the English countryside.

Of course, priding himself on his professionalism, he uses the trip for work purposes in the hope of recruiting a former worker back to Darlington Hall after he had convinced himself that, from her letter, she wanted to return.

So off he goes and all the while he recalls the major events of Darlington Hall during the 1930s as his employer, Lord Darlington, dabbles in politics and demonstrates Nazi sympathies - a man more influenced by others than someone to aspire to. All the while, of course, Stevens is the consummate professional and his attitude to his master is one of love and respect, a man whom he would obey without question.

The prose is sweet. Stevens’ voice is smooth, well constructed, and so utterly natural, and his musings over trying to come to terms with the world via such minor quibbles as perfecting the art of bantering demonstrate a wonderful character. Polite the whole way through his language only falters when it almost seems his emotions are about to better him and tears are ready to gush.

Written in the late 1980s this Booker Prize winner from Ishiguro is an interesting look at professionalism and I think, at least to me, it demonstrates how we need to find a balance between achieving our goals and being true to ourselves.

Perdido Street Station (Miéville, China)

2005-08-16T11:48:00.000Z

I’m not one for fantasy, the thought of the genre immediately brings to mind hordes of orcs, objects with magical properties, and characters who are either good or evil with no middle ground; of course, for this, Tolkien has to shoulder some of the blame. So, it was, with much concern that I took on board the recommendation of China Miéville’s Perdido Street Station, a fantasy novel that breaks with the stereotypes and thrusts us into a bleak world where science and magic work inharmoniously together, mutants go about their daily lives, and cities are powerful autarchies where even the slightest whisper against the government may lead to you joining the desaparecidos.

It begins with Isaac and Lin, a mixed species couple (he’s human and she’s khepri, an insect hybrid) whose lives change when both receive contracts of work. Isaac is asked by a mysterious visitor to restore his power of flight, while Lin is employed by the local mafia boss to craft his sculpture, an artform in which insect sputum is her medium. As they work at their respective jobs Isaac unwittingly unleashes his research specimens upon the city of New Crobuzon, an event that affects him in a number of ways, and with his friends he sets out to right his wrong.

At 800 pages Perdido Street Station is no breeze, but one can’t help feel that it is drawn out, stuffed with adjectives, and as tedious a read as life in New Crobuzon. It would certainly have benefited from large quantities of editing, but there are some who would argue that it’s a homage to the style of Mervyn Peake. The story, for the first two hundred pages, was nicely taking form, but, when the slake-moths Isaac was researching escape, the novel slides downhill into a depressing chase, which, despite the implied timeframe and urgency, seemed leisurely and unexciting.

It was incredibly drawn out so that small spaces of time were dragged over pages which added nothing to the tension. The story, at the beginning, was shaping up nicely and when the slake-moths escaped the book just went downhill into a really depressing chase which, despite the implied timeframe and the importance, seemed leisurely as the narrative failed to excite.

Miéville shows us that New Crobuzon, a city in the world of Bas-Lag, is a dirty place; grimy windows, littered streets, and scores of nefarious characters. It’s a well realised setting, and not difficult to imagine its soaring towers, its crumbling buildings, the rusted train network, but, by the final two hundred pages, the author still takes many opportunities from the pressing narrative to remind us of the extreme filth and depressive air surrounding the place.

The prose is mediocre, although, having never read Peake, I can’t say whether the tribute is fitting. The author, at times, seems more interested in displaying his extensive vocabulary, but, in an attempt to do so, he finds himself repeating a number of words that actually limits his lexis; ‘extraordinary’, ‘onieric’, and all possibilities of ‘thaumaturgy’ making considerable appearances. And when Miéville wants to describe something as brown then, rather than say it’s brown, he uses the word dun – repeatedly.

The citizens of New Crobuzon are well-crafted and, like the city, utterly loathable. They are also, due to different species, mutations, and immigrants, extremely varied. Aside from the aforementioned humans and khepri, there are winged creatures called garuda, evolved cacti, which I could never visualise without reverting to caricature, and the Remade, those whose bodies have been reconfigured in imaginative ways by the use of controlled magic, are just a few of the types to be found wandering the streets, or, like any society, living ghettoised.

While Perdido Street Station starts well, it devolves into little more than a moth hunt, punctuated with Miéville’s own socialist politics. The climax takes place in the station of the title, the main thoroughfare of New Crobuzon, but it is hard to tell why the book is named after this construction as it only appears in the denouement for approximately fifty pages. All in all, Miéville isn’t a bad writer per se but he is by no means great. Should I wish to read another fantasy novel then I may approach his fiction again, but I will wait until he has a substantial body of work behind him and hope, that with each book, he improves on his craft.

The Da Vinci Code (Brown, Dan)

2005-08-10T21:31:00.000Z

The success of The Da Vinci Code is certainly a literary anomaly. Both unexpected and unexplainable, the sheer volume of sales is surprising as the book is not, in my opinion, well written, intelligent, or original.

It begins in Le Louvre, Paris, with some of the clumsiest writing I've ever seen. Classics such as describing the eyes and hair colour of a silhouette are par for the course here as a museum curator of considerable renown (and how many curators have you heard of?) is murdered. From there, enter our cardboard hero, Robert Langdon, who will solve the mystery armed only with a similarly cardboard French girl and the author's help. Off he goes solving puzzles you and I solved pages ago (sometimes even chapters) despite us laymen not being schooled in his esoteric field. Throw in a couple of lame baddies, a historical secret, and the 'thrill' of the chase and you have The Da Vinci Code.

The book is fast paced, its 500 plus pages are quickly digested, although this is because the author writes such short chapters that there's a lot of blank space when one chapter ends a few lines into the page. Throughout, it uses one plot device: the cliffhanger. Fair enough, it gets you reading through the book but the author could have used more literary tactics in order to develop his story.

There are a number of places, however, where the book falls down: the writing, the characters, and the history. At times, it seems, Brown has raided a factbook of dubious authenticity and tried to cram as much of its content into his book without even deliberating over its relevance to the story at hand.

Firstly, the writing: It's simple and unemotional. There are many clumsy instances where the author says something which is simply not possible (see the silhouette comments above) or jars i.e. 'Silas prayed for a miracle and little did he know that in two hours he would get one'. You are left wondering if the author is, in parallel to the dubious facts, trying to squeeze in as much content as possible from his Little Book of Bad Cliches.

The characters, despite travelling with them for the duration of the book, never developed. They 'ooh-ed and ah-ed' their way through the startling revelations and that's about it. Their dialogue was intolerable, at times, and there were occasions when you just couldn't believe what was coming out of their mouths: Englishman saying 'soccer', French girl saying 'spring break'. It's Americanism after Americanism with these people despite only one character being American; surely, if you do as much research as Dan Brown claims to have done, you would find out how your characters speak. Another ‘joy’ is the utter shock on one character's face - who has just been told a stream of pseudo-history wher she hardly flinched- as she learns that 'rose' is an anagram of 'Eros'.

It's the facts, however, that really let this book down. It claims from the start that a number of things (such as art, documents, locations) are accurate which, with the author's supposed research, you hope to believe. And then you are inundated with Paris the wrong way around, the wrong police forces running about, French cops commanding the British cops, England being the only country in Europe where they drive on the left (conveniently forgetting Scotland, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Wales, Cyprus, and Malta), and other such nonsense as British knights carrying ID cards which pronounce them above the law.

That's the errors but, as I've said before, there are times when you feel the author is just including stuff to pad the book. Common sentences are 'Robert Langdon was surprised how many people didn't actually know...this or that' or 'Robert Langdon often smiled when he thought about how few people knew...this or that'. Place descriptions don't fare much better, unfortunately, as they are out of the story's context and read like 'copy and pastes' from tourist websites.

The pace, I enjoyed. The book, I didn't. Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco covered this topic back in the 1980s - it's nothing new. Brown is just recycling the poor The Holy Blood & The Holy Grail as fiction. Bad history meets bad fiction - it's a marriage made in Heaven.

If you want some no-brain beach reading - and haven't read this yet - then give it a try; it's airport tat! Don't, however, believe a word of it, as it is, for the most part, nonsense. If, however, you are looking for a great novel that deals with similar topics, and has a great reread potential, then read the aforementioned Foucault's Pendulum - it's superior in every way.